The Dev

Hi, my name is Chris! I am a Berlin based freelance artist and solo indie developer.

I worked around 5 years in the Entertainment/Games Industry as a Concept Artist when I finally decided to take up the challenge to develop my own game.

www.christophkaplan.de

Why I do this

I never called myself a gamer but computer games have definitely been a big part of my life. It all started with Dune 2 from Westwood, anything from Nintendo console to Age of Empires, Duke3D and StarCraft. I remember spending entire nights at LAN parties using null modem cable trying to make it work. Today I like to play games like Rimworld, 7 Day to Die and Hearthstone. All of these games carry a certain experimental and sandbox angle. Creating something has lead me to all kinds of different areas. At the age of 16 I started learning basic coding at an IT school and continued to study graphic design at uni. I made electronic/hip hop music and for many years I used to be a graffiti writer as well.

While working in the industry as a Concept Artist, I played around with Unity3d and I understood that I could combine all learnings from the past to make my own game.

I was hooked on the idea to make a game that I would play myself and i could define every aspect.

What kind of Game? Gameplay/World

When I was little I remember wondering why nobody made a game where you could “do anything you want”. Later open-world sandbox type games appeared and this seemed to simply be that type. I wanted to develop something close to genres that inspired me but adding my own twist. Since I had a lot of fun with survival games I picked this type as a base idea. When thinking of the type of game it leads me to the question about how to shape the setting of the world. Most survival games have a classical zombie setting in a contemporary world and military aspects. But I knew vaguely that my game had to be a whimsical, magical – and in parts – even bizarre world with a bit of humor. I like dark phantastic worlds and “new weird” fiction, a Lovecraftian universe influences me as well and I thought that I’ll try to mix things up, use ideas of zombie-world and combine it with magical and dreamy aspects. An overall anachronistic composition gives me the freedom to not get stuck with rational patterns too much and helped me to create the world of “Cult of the Abyss”.